


you committed, I'm your crime

by blackkat



Series: Horoscope Drabbles [40]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-10 05:58:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17420384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: Kurama hears the footsteps long before anything else.





	you committed, I'm your crime

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Normal Horoscopes on Tumblr:
> 
> Sagittarius: An ancient sewer system. The prison at its heart.

Kurama hears the footsteps long before anything else.

Steady steps, careful, even, and he can feel his teeth curl back from his lips in a snarl, shattering the ancient stillness of the air. Dust as heavy and thick as snowdrifts stirs for the first time in years as a distant ventilation system kicks on, and Kurama rises like a mountain surfacing from the sea, inch by inch and mile by mile. Staggers upright, feet braced, and falls forward to clutch at the bars with a laugh that’s jagged and poisonous in his throat.

There's someone coming to find him. No one’s come to find him in a hundred years.

“After so long?” he asks as the footsteps near. “What in the world could bring you down to my little prison?”

There's a pause that stretches out for minutes, a breath. “A prison in the middle of a sewer,” a voice says, half-muffled, twisted by the stone and steel and cables between them. “Someone must have been _very_ testy about what you did.”

Kurama growls, the sound rolling like thunder in the stone and chrome room. “ _What I did_ ,” he says, mocking. “You could say that.”

Another long stretch of moments without any sound beyond Kurama’s ragged breaths, and then a step. Just one. “And what is it you did?” the man asks, mild, disinterested, as if he doesn’t care about the answer.

Kurama laughs, low and vicious and full of threat. “You came all the way down here and don’t _know_?” he demands. “You're a damned fool. I killed a _god_ , and if you get too close, I’ll kill you too, just for a break in the monotony.”

“Will you really?” A touch of amusement, another step, another. Kurama scrapes his claws across the stone, breathing out heat and steam and ash, and—

“There were children, weren’t there?” the man asks, so quietly Kurama can hardly catch it. “The god stole children.”

Kurama goes perfectly, awfully still, and finds he can't even breathe. No one knows that. No one _could_. Nine children, half human and half something far older, but Kurama hid them away before Indra could find any trace of them, made sure they would sleep until he could come back to them. There's no _chance_ that they were found; even locked away in here, Kurama would have felt the spells break. He made sure of that.

“Who are you?” he asks, and the snarl of it makes the bars shake, rattles the metal panels and trembles the stone as he rises to his full height, nine tails almost skimming the ceiling, hunched but looming in the cell where the world locked him away and forgot him. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

The silence stretches for so long that Kurama almost thinks the man has left, walked away while he was stunned. But then, softly, there's a breath, and a shadow steps into the doorway.

“I think I'm your husband,” the man says lightly, and there's ice right down to Kurama’s bones. “And really, I don’t think breaking you out of prison was one of the promises we made Kurama, but—”

“ _Liar_ ,” Kurama snarls, and lunges. The bars rattle under the impact of his body, but they don’t break. They never do. “Liar, he was _killed_! They broke his soul into a thousand pieces, don’t you _dare_ —”

Light kindles, stark and white like lightning. Electricity cupped in a hand, reflecting in a cybernetic eye, on the planes of a familiar face that Kurama had thought was lost forever. Masked, with armor in sleek lines across his limbs and torso, unfamiliar in design. It’s been a century, after all, and the world moved at a blinding pace even in Kurama’s day. It didn’t stop when they dragged him down through the heart of the city and shut him away.

“Kakashi,” Kurama says, and wants to say _liar_ again but can't manage it when Kakashi is smiling at him, a tell in the crinkled lines around his eyes. It can't be him, but it has to be; no one else has ever made Kurama want to punch them and kiss them breathless in the same instant.

“Kurama,” Kakashi says, lifting a hand, and the snap of his mask detaching is loud in the still air. The shimmer of lights reflecting from the bright steel of the hallway, the lightning in his hand, cast his face into sharp relief, and Kurama _aches_. “You’re looking a lot taller, dear.”

Laughter, raw and breathless, shakes out of Kurama’s throat. “You _bastard_ ,” he says, and reaches out, one paw scraping the bars. Can't fit through, can't change; they took that from him when they locked him in a cell equal parts magic and human technology, stole the ability with nanites in his blood and seals inked into the stones. But Kakashi steps forward regardless, drags his fingertips over Kurama’s fur, and casts a lazy smile up at him.

“I think you’ve served enough time,” he says. “We’re late for our honeymoon.”

“You, complaining about lateness? The world must be ending.” Kurama rests his head against the bars, doesn’t take his eyes off Kakashi but doesn’t try to move, either. “Kakashi, I thought you were _dead_.”

“I was,” Kakashi says lightly, makes a joke out of it even if Kurama can see how it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Obito found all the pieces of me, and Rin stitched me back together.”

Kurama wants to grab him, drag him close, bury his face in familiar white hair and breathe in the smell if him, but he _can't._ “And if they catch you down here, they're going to kill you again,” he says roughly. “Get going, you idiot. _Leave_.”

Kakashi chuckles, lazy and light, and tucks his hands into his pockets. “They might try,” he says. “But this is a jailbreak, Kurama, and I'm not leaving without you.”

“ _What_?” Kurama jerks back before he can stop himself, casts a glance up the hall. It looks like it always does, lights buzzing faintly, echoing and empty, with no sound at all from the sewer system beyond. “You _can't_ , Kakashi. Mito laid the seals, and Tobirama built the safeguards. Even if I get out—”

“The nanites will kill you,” Kakashi finishes for him, and smiles at Kurama’s startled look. “I told you Rin and Obito were helping. Obito is distracting the city, and Rin built a neutralizer.”

Kurama can't imagine what would distract a whole city and the entirety of the pantheon living in the high-rises and buzzing streets, but if anyone can manage it, it’s likely Obito. “A cure?” he asks instead, and Kakashi hums in confirmation.

“Ready to go save Naruto and the others?” he asks, smiling faintly. “I think they’ve slept long enough. I think we all have.”

Kurama laughs, the sound of it shaking through him. “I'm going to knock your head clean off your shoulders, you reckless asshole,” he threatens, and doesn’t mean a word of it. “Get me out so I can hit you.”

Kakashi chuckles, turning to cross to the control panel on the wall. Instead of numbers, glowing glyphs cover the pad, the arcane language Mito and Tobirama used to lock Kurama away. Kakashi only studies it for half a moment, though, before he keys in a long sequence of symbols that shimmer golden, spiral out in a whirlwind that covers the cell, and sink into the bars. There's a long moment of perfect stillness, and then between one moment and the next the bars cease to exist.

Pulling a syringe from his coat pocket, Kakashi uncaps it, stepping up to Kurama’s side “Ready?” he asks, and splays a hand against the inside of Kurama’s paw, almost as tall as he is. Kurama braces himself, hunkering down, and nods.

“Do it,” he says, and Kakashi drives the needle home.

It feels like fire in his veins, like a rush of adrenaline, like _change_. Kurama howls, wrenches up, but there's a snap somewhere deep inside of him. A shift, a lurching tumble as perspective changes, and—

Kakashi catches him, or Kurama collapses into Kakashi and pulls him down, but either way they collide in the doorway of the open cell, and Kurama has never valued human limbs more. He wraps his arms around Kakashi, bruising-tight, feels familiar arms around his back and a trembling exhale in his hair.

“Kurama,” Kakashi breathes, and Kurama clutches him close and doesn’t let go.


End file.
